Why I Am Muslim

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

The other day, someone asked me why I was Muslim. I had not considered this question for a few years, so I could not answer eloquently at the time. Of course, this is an important question, and one for which I am grateful to be reminded. 

In this essay, I wish to briefly delineate my reasons for being Muslim. My purpose in doing this is more for myself than for anybody else; so that I can verbalize to myself the experiences and doubts that are typically beneath the surface. My reasons for posting this publicly are to encourage critiques from others, doubtless many of whom are much more intelligent and inspired than myself. 

Clarificatory remarks

First, I wish to distinguish between reasons for being a Muslim and for being a (mono)theist. For the purposes of this essay, I will take it for granted that I have good reasons for being a theist, even a monotheist, which would exist regardless of my familiarity with Islam. Naturally, reasons for (dis)believing in God(s) are more philosophical and subject to public reason/scrutiny than those for being Muslim. Being a monotheist is of course necessary, but not sufficient, to being a Muslim. Although my being a monotheist is an important part of my believing in Islam, it is not my primary concern in this essay. 

Second, I do not claim that any of these reasons is decisive in and of itself. Indeed, I do not even think that they are subject to publicly accessible reasons the way that arguments about the existence of God are. The way I approach these reasons is this: taken as a constellation of reasons that have affected me, personally, I find them persuasive and sufficient to take Islam as a guiding principle for my life. I do not wish to imply that these would be at all persuasive for others, and I basically take religious commitment to be in the realm of doxa (albeit closer to episteme than some other doxastic commitments). As I will explain below, the gap between the uncertainty of opinion and the assurance of knowledge is filled by commitment, not by any sort of naive trust.

Lastly, I wish to emphasise that there are reasons which I simply cannot expound upon since many of them are background conditions for finding the reasons which I do list to be meaningful at all. For instance, I am not a cynical person by nature. I do not distrust people when I meet them. This is a prerequisite to my believing some people not to be merely charismatic, but truly good (reason #1 in the list below). As another example, I have had a loving upbringing and have not suffered abuse at the hands of religious figures in my life. Undoubtedly this has allowed me to see aspects of religious beauty that might  have been snatched from others. Reading the Qur'an, for example, does not trigger traumatic memories for me. And so on. 

Reasons for being a Muslim 

The following are not listed in any particular order:


Key figures 

Perhaps the most important reason for my being Muslim is having encountered Muslims who I think are truly good and whose lives I wish to emulate. I do not mean this in any sentimental, rose-tinted manner. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful people in general: my family, friends, teachers, colleagues, and so on. Despite their goodness, I am not referring to most of these people.

I am referring to people whom I have met who I aspire to be like, not just in one aspect of my life, but totally. These are a handful whom I think are truly and incredibly good. I use the adjective "incredibly" very precisely here to mean in an unbelievable manner. In other words, these two or three people are those whom, if I had not met them, I would simply not believe that they could exist. They are people whom I would call saint-like literally, not just metaphorically. 

Sometimes we hear about people who do an act of greatness: a mother may die to save her child or a person donates all her savings to save someone's life. The sense of incredulity—combined with extreme awe, respect, and gratitude at existing in a world where such an act of profound self-sacrifice or terrible beauty can exist—is what I want to denote. 

Now consider those feelings of awe, gratitude, and even veneration and multiply it across the entirety of a person's life. It is not just that this person has done one great, newspaper-worthy act of greatness. Rather, she has organised her entire life to being consistently and self-consciously good. It is not incredible because it is flashy, but simply because the existence of such a life seems almost impossible. 

Take all of life's drudgery, its mundaneness, its misery. Most of us plod along, content to be minimally good. Once in a while we make an effort to become better. We set a New Year's Resolutions List or promise to call our mothers once a week or to share our food with our neighbours. But then the slog of life comes along, or we become bored, or it is simply too difficult and we give up. This person, on the other hand, persists, day in and day out! It is simply remarkable to me. 

But of course, you will say, such people need not be Muslims. This is where it becomes a bit personal to my experience. I have met many lovely, good, and self-sacrificing people of all religious backgrounds. I work in healthcare, so please trust me that I am not prejudiced on this point and have access to the most intimate details of people's lives. However, I have only very rarely met the type of trusting, quietly joyous, and diligent person of whom I speak. I have only encountered this peculiar strand of personality (rarely!) in Muslim-majority countries (not even necessarily in Canada). These people have a presence that is undeniable and uncommon, and they have all, without exception, been observant Muslims who have dedicated themselves to the study and practice of Islam. They attribute their goodness to Islam. 

Perhaps, though, I am indeed prejudiced or simply more acquainted with the lives of Muslims. I can almost hear the cries of bigotry while I type. All right! So let me accept the possibility of people from different religious backgrounds being like this. Note that I do not think all religious beliefs are false (nor that all non-Muslims are kuffar i.e. strong disbelievers), so this is not something that I find difficult to accept in theory. Even if that is the case, then, my philosophical convictions about God's nature preclude me from emulating non-monotheists in totality. 

To return to the point: I bring up such a person because she does not embody simply a moment of goodness, but a life of goodness. When I have met such people, I have thought to myself: this is who I want to be. My disbelief in the possibility of such a person, and then to encounter her in all her normal humanity and reality, disrupted something within me that forced me to acknowledge the possibility of a life that I had, until then, considered impossible.

In addition to the sense of veneration and admiration, I began to feel a sort of cosmic dread--I have been blessed to have met this person, and if I do not try to be her, then I will be cursed, somehow. 

This fear might sound juvenile, but I think many people feel this and that it is not without justification. Often people fall in love and feel if they do not act on their love, they will be cursed. Sometimes it is histrionics, but surely sometimes it is true? Wasn't Majnun haunted by Leila, after all?

In any case, my primary motivation for being Muslim is having met a handful of Muslims whom I wish to emulate in a deep sense. Since they organised their lives around Islam—a faith whose fundamental tenets are not against my monotheist beliefs—then I must, as well. My faith in the unlikely existence of such people carries me through the difficulties of some other Muslim personalities. Perhaps if you have met similar people, you will know what I mean.

Before moving on, I wish to clarify one more point: I know that I sound a bit like a cult follower. I want to emphasise that these people of whom I speak never made any demands of me. Some of them hardly even noticed me. Nor were any of them acquainted with one another. Indeed, I am not in touch with most of them now and I do not know if I will meet such individuals ever again. They also were not met at Islamic conventions or dedicated retreats. They came unexpectedly into my life and left as quietly as they came. It was simply the presence and existence of such people that impressed me. It has made me believe that such a man as Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), of whom similar things are said, could exist.

Myths

Islam simply has beautiful myths. There is no other way to say this. But it is not simply that they are beautiful, but also that they are complex and at times unsettling. 

But I must explain this further: I am not a Muslim because Islam is beautiful in any straightforward way. It is not that I am a Muslim for aesthetic reasons. Instead, I like to think of one's ethical life as that of a garden: you need to have seeds in order to cultivate beauty and benefit from your garden. If I want to give fruits to my neighbour, for example, or to raise a healthy and nourished child, then I need to have fruit seeds. A barren landscape might be poetic in theory—man against the world, man courageously facing the abyss, etc—but it will not bear fruits.

To linger on the analogy, nutritious food is not always easy to eat. After all, nutritious food is something a person has to develop taste for, and it comes with rules. It must be cultivated, which is also a lot of work and quite difficult. Although it can sometimes be quite aesthetically pleasing to be half-starved and to posture as a dramatic personage, and doubtless such a life does indeed take some courage and sincerity, it can still be barren. 

I think that an ethically-rich life needs to draw on myths, stories, and parables. We need persons to look up to and aspire towards. We also needs standards, discipline, and constraints. Self-imposed ferality is hardly conducive to ethical welfare, just as it is not very promising for one's emotional development. I don't think this is any different from the—hopefully accepted—view that morality requires community. 

Okay, so Islam has myths. So what? Lots of religions have myths, after all.

I agree (myths are probably my favourite part of religions). Myths are why I am religious at all. There is simply so much more to reflect upon when one is has in store profound, well-formed myths. And unlike some mythmaking (for example, the myth of the self-reliant, buffered human self in the early modern era as detailed by Charles Taylor), I think it is internally consistent when religions have myths. Their myths make sense, given what religions claim to provide. Myths fit into the project of religiousness naturally and unobtrusively. They are not a sort of defence mechanism or grappling with cognitive dissonance (pardon if offensive).  

The myths in Islam are not simply beautiful, but they are concrete things that I can draw upon when dealing with my ethical development. At the same time, they are not endlessly interpretable, and this is because of my next favourite thing about Islam: its legality. 

Legality 

One thing I know about myself is that I am lazy. I love things to be convenient. This little piece of self-knowledge is a spectre that haunts me when it comes to religious epistemology: do I actually believe something, or am I just motivated to believe it due to my own sloth?

Islam, as anybody familiar with the religion will know, has some hard-set rituals. They are not very many or even terribly difficult, but they are comprehensive in that they affect every aspect of one's life. For instance, you must pray five times a day (that's a lot!). You must fast for a certain number of days of the year. You must give a certain percentage of your wealth to charity. You must not yell at your parents. You must shower after sexual intimacy. And so on. These are not simply guidelines, rules that one must follow as a Muslim or else she commits a sin. 

Of course, Islam also has a generous amount of reassurances about God's mercy, forgiveness, and love of repentance. I do not wish to imply that the religion is harsh, since it is most certainly is not, but there is quite a bit of discipline involved. 

One of my reasons for being Muslim is that the discipline and legality of Islam prevents me from morphing it into a creature of my own laziness. It is not that I am fully observant of these rituals, but just that I cannot make excuses. It simply is the case that I have done something wrong by missing prayer; I cannot justify this sin to myself. Moreover, the amount of daily discipline it requires is immense, but it is not unrealistic. 

The discipline in Islam is very appealing to me on both a practical and an aesthetic level. On the practical side of things, I think that the Islamic way of life is, generally speaking, very favourable to an ethical life (we can put aside exceptions that I am sure others also have difficulty in understanding). It is a religion of becoming better, not simply feeling spiritual highs. As God says in the Holy Qur'an, it is a religion for those on "the steep path:" disciplining oneself against the Satanic urgings of one's soul (90:3-17, tr Abdel Haleem)

"[I swear] by parent and offspring, that We have created man for toil and trial.

Does he think that no one will have power over him?

‘I have squandered great wealth,’ he says.

Does he think no one observes him?

Did We not give him eyes, a tongue, lips, and point out to him the two clear ways [of good and evil]?

Yet he has not attempted the steep path.

What will explain to you what the steep path is?

It is to free a slave, to feed at a time of hunger an orphaned relative or a poor person in distress,

and to be one of those who believe and urge one another to steadfastness and compassion." 

Practically, too, I think that Islam takes many of our urgings and gives us something concrete to pour them into. Sometimes this is used as a sociological critique of religions: religions fulfill our desires and create social harmony. But I think it is a good thing! I have a need, let's say, to venerate someone. Islam fulfills that need in a temperate manner. Or I feel the need to clean myself, to be purified, when I approach something holy. Islam makes me do wudu (ablution) before entering a sacrosanct state of mind.

On an aesthetic and theoretical level, these very Islamic laws contrast pleasingly with the esoteric dimensions of the religion. It is not merely a religion of ambiguity, but also a clear, disciplined way of life. This prevents two things: sentimentalism and moralism.

Let me begin with sentimentalism. My worry with myth-interpretation is of becoming sentimental. I do not have a clear definition of sentimentalism yet, but I hope I can indicate towards it vaguely. I do not mean  mere emotion, as religions of course induce emotions. Nor am I strongly contrasting sentimentalism to rationality. Rather, sentimentalism occurs when a person lacks meaningfulness in her life, so she resorts instead to excessive doses of mysterious feeling.

Of course, there are aspects to life that are mysterious. But a sentimental person revels in enigma, I believe, because it gives a sense of profundity rather than being of any real depth. In fact, its lack of demands on her is precisely one of its attractions. Such enigma rarely causes true discomfort, only a semblance of unease that is in reality pleasing to the sufferer, and a sort of catharsis from the dull clarity of typical life. (I do think religious people can be sentimental, in this sense.) Sometimes sentimentalism can be lead to spiritualism, in Rene Guenon's sense (The Reign of Quantity, chapter 32 onwards). But it can also be atheistic. In fact, much of sentimentalism that I have encountered is in the realm of pseudo-scientific quantum physics babble by non-physicists. 

By being quite ritualistic and legalistic, Islam simply forces one to deal with reality as it is. Eventually the mystery must be put aside and one must return to her duties.  It enforces discipline, even upon reluctant people. 

Of course, some personalities are naturally inclined towards esotericism. But I believe (though again, I have difficulty articulating this) that sentimentality and spirituality are exactly contraries of one another. My sense is that as one holds oneself up to ever-higher standards of ethics through Islamic jurisprudence and eventually Islamic akhlaq/ethics, her inclinations towards mystery will promote further practical/ethical benefits, instead of stifling them. The two will work hand-in-hand: outward actions gain spiritual meaning as discipline becomes rewarded.

Second, legality also counteracts, ironically, against moralism (though I doubt anything can ever eliminate pompous and moralistic people completely). I consider moralism to have the following four features:

    1. A reactive impulse to  cultural norms, especially those of which you are not a part (even subcultures, such as another clique in school).

    2. A denial of the the material needs of people (e.g. avoidance of hunger).

    3. An often religious justification for the above, e.g. in Providence, focussing on the afterlife, criticisms of sin. 

    4. Based in the psychological need for control of others. 

Consider the verses of the Holy Qur'an that I quoted above. As the above verses suggest, the material needs of others matter and impose duties on those of us who are more fortunate. Moreover, there are vast and complex laws in Islamic legal systems about the rights of others upon us. Most obviously, this comes up during zakat (mandatory alms) when a wealthy person must give a portion of her wealth to an impoverished person directly, without mediation. 

There is a final intellectual benefit to Islam's legality that I think can often be overlooked. My husband once said, in regards to the following Qur'anic verse, that disagreements about esoteric and highly abstract matters are perhaps less consequential in Islam than they seem (Quran 3:7-9, tr Abdel Haleem):

"[I]t is He who has sent this Scripture down to you [Prophet]. Some of its verses are definite in meaning- these are the cornerstone of the Scripture- and others are ambiguous. The perverse at heart eagerly pursue the ambiguities in their attempt to make trouble and to pin down a specific meaning of their own: only God knows the true meaning. Those firmly grounded in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it: it is all from our Lord’ - only those with real perception will take heed - ‘Our Lord, do not let our hearts deviate after You have guided us. Grant us Your mercy: You are the Ever Giving. Our Lord, You will gather all people on the Day of which there is no doubt: God never breaks His promise.’"

I have taken his interpretation to heart. The legality and rituals of Islam allow me to explore the theology with relative freedom. Naturally, there are theological points that are considered indisputable: the oneness of God, the existence of an afterlife, and so on. But the precise interpretation of many points is ambiguous, and perhaps with good reason. If I follow the rituals, duties, and obligations of Islamic law, I am  intellectually free. (God's love also has a role to play here, and I depend entirely on His promises of forgiveness.)

The Holy Qur'an 

My last major reason for being Muslim is the Holy Qur'an. This is the reason that is most particular to Islam itself. I find it unlikely that is not from a divine source. I do not think this is, strictly speaking, impossible. However, combined with the other reasons I have mentioned, and given the actual text as it reads itself to me, I find it unlikely that it was written in the way other texts are.

This is difficult to explain if one has not read the Holy Qur'an, of course, but also if one has not been touched by it. The Holy Qur'an has such an unfamiliar type of voice—mixing harshness with intimacy, laws with myths, narrative with ejaculations—but yet so overall consistent that it simply is not like any other text I have ever read.

Texts, (in)famously, reveal as much about the author as they conceal.  Even great works of literature have some sort of a psychologically analysable author. The Holy Qur'an, on the other hand, frustrates my humble attempts at psychologizing its Author. It is entirely without parallel in works that I have read. I will not dwell any further on this point.

Filling in the gaps

Before concluding, I wish to return to the question of likelihood. I have consistently said that I find it persuasive or likely that Islam is true. At times, I have said things that almost seem tantamount to it being my preference that Islam is true. So is this indeed the case? Am I not certain about Islam?

Yes, I am not as certain about the truth of Islam as I am about God's existence (or my own existence for that matter). It is not a self-evident truth, nor is it a deductive necessity. As mentioned, there are many reasons which have coalesced and, combined, make me think Islam is a remarkable religion that I would be silly not to follow. I have some hint, some ineffable sense, that this way wisdom lies. 

How then do I follow something of which I am not certain? I said above that it is not naive trust that I rely on. Rather, I am strongly committed to the religion. There are many things in life that I am uncertain about, but I am committed to them. Of course, this takes an element of trust: I am committed to my husband because I trust him. But my commitment is not only consequent on my trust in him. Rather, I am also committed to trusting him. There is value in such a commitment: it enables the stability that allows for subtle, but sustainable, growth and intimacy. There is also a type of knowledge and experience that comes from commitment that I do not think can come from jumping ship every few years.

Similarly, I am committed to Islam because it seems very promising as a way to become a better person, and a religion that promises to give me more—morally, spiritually, intellectually, perhaps even in terms of inspiration—than what I put into it. There may be benefits to exploration, and that may be other people's path. But for myself, I know that I have to commit to something. The freedom of exploration is too dizzyingly pleasurable. I feel the same cosmic dread that I mentioned before: that such freedom is some sort of Faustian bargain. It does not portend anything good and I shrink from it. Is this superstitious? I do not know, but I cannot deny it.

So, I must commit to living some sort of consistent life. Such a life must be structured around guiding principles. It is personally urgent for me, in the way that perhaps exploration is urgent for others. By organising my life around Islam, I am committing to cultivating a garden that I hope will bring real fruit in the form of ethical betterment and, perhaps (if lucky!), a glimpse of God. 

May God grant us all guidance and understanding. And God knows best.

- MM, September 5th, 2021